I am cycling my tank with Tetra Safestart... water is evaporating, and I would like to top it off.... it;s been 2-3 days, and you are not supposed to use prime for a week into the TSS cycle. can I use Distilled or RO water to top off? which one is better with NO chlorine... some sites say there is chlorine in distilled some say there is not... is RO water safer? Thanks.

I am cycling my tank with Tetra Safestart... water is evaporating, and I would like to top it off.... it;s been 2-3 days, and you are not supposed to use prime for a week into the TSS cycle. can I use Distilled or RO water to top off? which one is better with NO chlorine... some sites say there is chlorine in distilled some say there is not... is RO water safer? Thanks.

there is no chlorine in RO or Distilled water, its easier to use RO water, go for RO.

I used to use distilled water and salt mix for my nano reef with no problems. TDS always came to 0. Now I use an RODI since I upgraded to a larger reef and have the same results. I believe even if you use just RO the filter will remove chlorine.

Prime is just plain chlorine remover( sodium thiosulfate). If there is chloromines and you use Prime it will leave Ammonia behind as that is usually what the free chlorine has bonded to to form chloromines in a very simple explanation. you can buy sodium thiosulfate from your local poolshop for a few dollars and the MSDS on Prime lists it as less than 10%.

My advice would be to age your water with an air pump running for 12 hours uncovered. (if the water is covered the burnt off gas can re enter the water).

i believe neither chlorine nor clorom is presented nowadays in the tap water. its oldschool to use it, europe does not do that and i think the same goes for america

Maybe in EU, but in most cities in the USA chlorine or chloramine is used in water treatment. Private wells usually have none, but most people are on a community water service that does use one or the other of these.

Here's some more food for thought was well about distilled that I heard over the winter, but never really looked into it, but sounds plausible. Some distilled systems use copper piping, and traces of copper could b in the water. Like I said its a comment I heard. Be interested if there was any truth to it or a concern.

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